The Reality of Vanilla WoW

I remember vanilla World of Warcraft. Every so often, you’ll see many players wistfully thinking back about the fondness for the old days. Thinking about how the game play and the difficulty was truly better then.

That’s Kodo-crap.

Let me tell you, those days weren’t all that great. People that remember it so positively are doing so through rose coloured glasses!

We’ll talk about the PvE side of things.

Raids consisted of 40 people. Of those 40 people, 10 were phenomenal. 20 were mediocre and average. The last 10 players were carried because they were either sleeping, AFK, or just plain stupid. Coordinating the efforts of 40 people was like trying to pull greased up weeds from the ground.

It took an abysmally long time to gear out people. Remember, this was when drops were 2 items per boss. We’re really lucky to have 5 items a boss on 25 man these days.

Don’t get me started on attunement quests? Having to grind through Blackrock Depths just to get keyed for Molten Core? I did so many of those runs to help my guildies get keyed.

Life before the dungeon finder was agonizing depending on your server. Sitting in chat for 3 hours looking for a healer for Undead Strat? Good luck. Oddly enough, that’s why I rolled a priest. Current SWTOR players can sympathize a little bit with that.

What about PvP?

Cross realm didn’t exist.

Alterac Valley battles took up the whole day (if not more).

Servers usually had one or two pre-form teams per faction and queues took longer than most in order to ensure both teams were lined up against other pre-forms. It made for some fun rivalries though. One of my first ever guilds in WoW was a PvP guild. All I did was Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley while playing on a Paladin.

Granted, there were some memorable moments.

Finishing my Benediction.

Killing Rag for the first time (on the last attempt, no less).

40 players acting in a cohesive unit for the first time after screwing up for hours on end instilled this amazing feeling. It was infectious. It’s like this feeling of accomplishment and the thought that “You know, maybe we really can do stuff”. All that coordination, all the wipes, they actually mean something when factored in with the 40 man raid.

Epic

About me

My name is Matticus and this is my World of Warcraft blog. Here you can read about my thoughts regarding healing as a priest. As a guild master, I also write about guild and raid related topics. The blog has expanded to include thoughts from other regular contributors. The aim of this blog is to help you grow and improve. My unending goal is to have something relevant and useful in every post. or more, you can check out my columns on WoW Insider. Visit theGuildmasters to talk shop with other GMs, raid leaders, and officers. Or if you're looking to join a guild, check out my guild Conquest.